Exploring the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Edgar database by sampling joint venture contracts

Through its electronic filing system EDGAR, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provides information that listed companies are required to report. However, while the information is thus made public, it is not readily available. This article explains the purpose of the SEC and its EDGAR filing system, how it works and how anyone can access this information. It further explains how companies file their material contracts as attachments to their filings and how to find them. The paper also explains the development of a program for mining EDGAR, resulting in the extraction of over six hundred JV contracts. Finally, the paper explores basic text mining techniques to dissect the contracts and point out the most widely used clauses, such as joint venture type and scope, the laws governing the contract and the description and responsibilities of the parties and opens a broad research agenda.